Known Power
by Steampunk.Chuckster
Summary: Season 3, Canon. A missing scene from "Chuck Versus the Other Guy", after Sarah's admittance of her feelings for Chuck and the next scene at Ring headquarters. Sarah's P.O.V.


**A/N: **This scene takes place in the episode "Chuck versus the Other Guy", between Sarah's admission of her feelings for Chuck and the spy trio's mission at Ring headquarters. As requested by a friend of mine. I'd like to thank all of the authors in the Chuck fandom whose stories I've read and reviewed. Each and every one of them helped me gather enough courage to write and post my own work here. I love my Chuckster family so _so _much.

And I hope _all_ of you enjoy this little ditty even a fraction as much as I've enjoyed your work.

One last little note: I wrote this and edited it today. And now I'm posting it. So I apologize if it isn't EXACTLY up to snuff. Enjoy!

**Disclaimer: **I would never be so lucky as to own "Chuck", its characters, its fantastic plot, et cetera. I also don't own my own place, or my own car, nor do I have a job. So maybe be a little bit less of a jerk, World, and let me have my fanfiction. _Wommp wommp._

Without further ado...

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"Let's get you some coffee."

Sarah watched as Morgan eased Chuck's arm over his shoulder and hoisted him bodily from his position against the wall.

Her lips were still tingling with the sensation of Chuck's kiss, her heart still beating wildly, and she fought in vain to keep the ecstatic smile from showing too brightly on her face. As it was, she could feel her mouth twinge with the effort as Chuck was quite nearly dragged down the hallway towards the bathroom.

"Sarah?" Morgan's voice called out, muffled by Chuck's hand, as his still-lubricated friend had decided to put his fingers against the bearded man's face. "Chuck, stop that. Sarah!"

"The coffee," she rushed. "Right, I'll get it." She moved into the kitchen, hearing the tell-tale thumping of someone attempting to hold a much larger person up while turning on the shower. Chuck had been sitting in the same spot since the moment she'd entered, so she hadn't really seen how incredibly drunk he was, although she should have known, she mused to herself while slipping the filter into the coffee maker and beginning to measure the grinds. There was a mostly empty bottle of whiskey by his side when she'd gotten there and she highly doubted any of it had been consumed by Morgan.

It would have been quite the feat with the way he was tied up by the video game controllers. Sarah had to admit, she was a little unsettled by how expertly Chuck had bound his friend for how wasted he must have been—a product of an inebriated flash, perhaps?

Shaking the slightly amusing thought off, she poured the water, slipped the pot back under the spout, and pressed start. Hurrying back into the hallway, she almost ran into Morgan who slipped out of the bathroom and pulled the door closed behind him, leaving it cracked a few inches.

"He's uh—He's fine. I'm letting it—you know—on his head." He cleared his throat and folded his hands together behind his back.

"Oh. Right. Good." She couldn't help her eyes wandering over Morgan's shoulder to the crack in the door, and when she caught herself searching, she lowered her gaze to her feet. "Thank you, Morgan."

"Aw, come on, for what?" He smiled and walked past her towards the kitchen. She followed and stayed in the doorway, watching as he pulled three mugs out of the cupboard.

"Oh I don't—I don't need any coffee. But thank you."

"You sure? It's pretty late and if you're going to be on a mission…" He invitingly waved a large mug in the shape of Darth Vader's bell-shaped head. It wasn't the most practical mug she'd ever seen.

"No, no. But thank you." Sarah was certain she wouldn't need coffee to get through the mission. She'd never felt more alert, in spite of the fluttering still present in her fingers and toes. She was excited, giddy. And she knew she had to stamp it out in the next few minutes, at least until after this mission. It wasn't just about getting through this incredibly dangerous op alive, or successfully bringing about what could be the end of the Ring as they knew it; Shaw would be there and he had no idea what had just gone on between her and Chuck. _Crap, this is complicated._

As if sensing the rush of thoughts surging through her mind, Morgan cleared his throat again and put the Darth Vader mug back before going to the fridge and pulling almond creamer out. "Uh…"

A spike of nervousness shot through the CIA agent as Morgan turned to her. He had _the look_. She knew it well. He got it whenever he wanted to hand out his Morganesque words of wisdom. She wondered just how much of the heart-to-heart he'd heard from his room. Whatever he'd heard, she wasn't exactly in the right mindset to discuss it at the moment. She couldn't afford to dwell on it.

There was a mission, and a potentially awkward one at that.

_God, I hope Chuck is sober enough not to say anything during the op_.

She would handle Shaw later, and she and Chuck could sit down and _really _talk while he wasn't under the influence of whiskey and sugar-free mint ice cream. She ran her tongue over her lips, still tasting the sweet and bitter mixture of the alcohol and the usually unpleasant after-taste of the plastic sweetener used in sugar-free products. This time it had been emphatically pleasant, she mused happily.

Thankfully Morgan just set everything down and opted not to discuss her feelings, instead gesturing towards the hallway. "I'm gonna check on Chuck to make sure he didn't pass out in the shower. Yeah." He disappeared around the corner after muttering "Scuse me" and nudging past her through the doorway.

With a sigh, she went to the coffee which had since finished brewing and poured it into the two mugs. While she knew Chuck usually preferred at least a little sugar in his coffee, his best bet at this point would be to down a cup of black.

Sarah focused on pouring the coffee and listening to the two friends' muffled voices in the bathroom, trying in vain to beat down the lingering questions swimming around her head now that she had time to at least partially drift down from her ecstatic high.

She'd just admitted her feelings to Chuck Bartowski. Chuck Bartowski, the supervisor of the Nerd Herd at the Buy More. Chuck Bartowski, arguably the single-most important man to the United States government at the moment. Chuck Bartowski, _the Intersect_. In spite of the trouble she knew could come of this, and the numerous problems they'd be encountering in the near future (if the heady spewing of emotions that had just taken place in the entryway didn't distract them enough to kill them both during tonight's mission), she couldn't force herself to regret any of it. She'd told him the whole truth.

Relief swept over her like a warm blanket. It had almost been a year since Prague, and in that time, she'd been miserable. She'd kept her head held high, in spite of the wicked kill-shot to her pride Chuck's rejection triggered. At first she'd thought she might escape it all, get reassigned, and never have to see him again. She could have survived that, as much as she'd missed him, yearned for him, in those few weeks she was gone. After he'd chosen the spy life over her, Sarah had spent a good deal of her free time crying pitifully and hating herself for it.

Yes, she'd hated herself so bitterly in those dark days, but she'd never been able to hate Chuck. She'd thought terrible things about him, some true and others exaggerated, but even then she loved him. She thought about him constantly, wondering how he'd changed without her realizing, wondering why he didn't want her.

Then coming back and hearing General Beckman put the team back together, she thought she was being punished by some other-wordly power that held some sort of grudge against her. To live in Burbank again, see him every day, have to be his partner and work beside him was hell on earth.

Sarah shook her head again, pushing the terrible past out of her thoughts and instead smiling as she realized Chuck had reiterated his feelings for her. She wondered just how drunk he was. Would he remember later what she'd said? She hoped so because she wasn't exactly sure she'd be able to say it again. It had taken too much effort to admit her feelings to him the first time. Some unknown power had reached up and pushed the words out of her before her spy training could quell them.

_Unknown power_. She scoffed at herself. It wasn't an unknown power that had made her bare her soul to Chuck while he wallowed in a drunken stupor in his underwear, a video game guitar controller perched on his lap. She knew exactly what that power was. She loved him, every part of him, including the part that hadn't told her the truth about his Red Test to protect his friend and partner in spite of the happiness that secret was keeping him from. She loved that throughout their entire conversation, his fingers were poised on the plastic guitar as though he was still playing the game, and the only time he'd moved his hands had been when her words truly sunk in and he cupped her face to tenderly kiss her back. She loved that he'd brought up his Red Test, even after she'd admitted her feelings, as though he wanted her to be absolutely sure, as though he were afraid she'd forgotten about it and would remember later only to withdraw her declaration of love. She loved that he was the type of guy who when his heart was broken ended up in his underwear and tube socks in the entryway of his apartment, listening to sappy 80s music and drinking whiskey with a carton of ice cream at his side. She just loved him…so, _so _much.

She was jolted out of her own head when she heard sneakers shuffling in the hallway. Morgan poked his head in the kitchen. "Chuck's done holding his head under the shower and he asked for you."

Sarah bit her lip and nodded, picking up the mug of coffee she'd poured and bringing it with her. She felt Morgan watching her from the doorway until she slipped into Chuck's bedroom and nudged the door shut with her hip.

She found Chuck face-down on the bed, his wet mess of curls dripping onto the duvet. With a sigh, she set the coffee down on his desk and knelt at his side, setting a hand on his cheek. "Chuck, you okay?" She felt a pang of worry. They'd have to move a bit more quickly than this, and if Chuck had passed out on his bed…

But he lifted his head with wide, alert eyes. The crooked smile she'd grown accustomed to over the years timidly eased onto his lips. "Sarah…" he breathed softly and, she happily noticed, lovingly.

"I'm here, Chuck. You know, maybe it isn't a good idea for you to go on a mission tonight."

"No, no!" He scrambled up to his knees, the mattress bouncing beneath him as he took her hands tightly in his and pulled her up to sit beside him. "No, I'm fine. I told you before. The ice cream did a lot to…to…you know."

"Are you sure? Chuck, I don't want you going into the Ring headquarters…erm, impaired." She winced a bit at her word choice. "That could be incredibly dangerous, to say the least."

"I'm not drunk anymore, Sarah, I promise. I'll just drink some coffee and I'll be right as rain." His clear-eyed smile and sincere reassurance was enough for her, so she nodded.

"Okay, here…" She got up and went to get his mug from the desk and brought it back to him. "Drink as much of this as you can. Then we've got to get back to Castle and Shaw. We're already running a bit behind schedule."

Chuck watched her over the rim of his mug as he gulped some coffee down. "Sarah, is…is everything okay?"

She furrowed her brow. Had she really lost her touch that much that he could see through what he'd once teasingly deemed her spy-mask? She shook her head, ridding herself of the unsure thoughts that she'd been thinking—about when and how she'd tell Shaw she wasn't going with him anywhere, about how she'd broach the subject of this potentially harmful relationship between her and Chuck when next she sat in front of General Beckman, about Chuck himself and what he'd be expecting from her. And just what did _she _expect from him?

She took a deep breath to slow the panic down, and an easy smile slipped onto her features, her eyes shining as she leaned down and wrapped her hands around his neck. She stared into his eyes intently, her thumbs stroking his jaw.

"Yes, Chuck." She tilted her head so that her lips brushed his and she tasted coffee this time.

"You sure?"

"Chuck, we have other things to worry about right now. We can talk more later."

She regretted her words as a twinge of panic widened his eyes. She knew immediately that "talk more later" had translated to "I've changed my mind and I haven't fallen for you after all" in his still foggy mind. With an inward sigh, she sat beside him again.

"Chuck, please…we'll be late. And this may be _the _mission that ends the Ring. Shaw's found their headquarters. We could be bringing in the director tonight. We have to focus. Can you do that for me?" She leaned her face close to his, waiting a bit more patiently than she felt was warranted at the moment. They were quickly losing their window of time and any moment she'd be getting a call from Shaw asking what was taking so long.

_Well, Daniel, I found Chuck in a drunken heap in his underwear and I professed my love for him. So there's that._

"Sorry, yeah," he breathed. "Yeah, focus. Right. The mission. The Ring. Right." He nodded vigorously, gulping more of the coffee until there was maybe a third of the cup left. "I think…I think I'm done with the coffee." He looked a tad bit green, so she took it from him and got it out of his sight, setting it on his desk and hurrying back to him.

She held out her hands in front of his face and he swallowed thickly, then grinned, his lips twitching tentatively at first before widening in that teeth baring, nose wrinkling smile that more often than not made her legs turn to jelly. By the time he took her hands and stood up, she wasn't sure if she was supporting him or vice versa, but she didn't care a moment later because his arms rounded her waist and he pulled her against him.

Tumultuous thoughts of her future as a CIA agent, her future as Chuck's girlfriend, and the mission they were supposed to be rushing to at this very moment flew from her mind as she rounded his torso with her own arms and clung tightly, burying her face in his shoulder. He'd changed out of the now damp 'faux-paw' shirt and had pulled on the black long sleeve knit he preferred for missions. He'd also pulled on a pair of black pants, covering his cute legs she'd rarely seen before but had been on full display when she'd walked into his apartment earlier.

Feeling a rush of unbridled emotions threaten to bubble up to the surface, all of which were positive but at the moment untimely, she pulled away from him and allowed herself only a quick grin. "Come on, let's get some shoes on and get out of here."

"Right." With one last squeeze of her hands, he disappeared into his closet and came back with his "spy shoes", which were nothing more than a pair of black rubber dress shoes. He tugged them on without incident and within minutes they were hurrying towards the front door of the apartment, Morgan on their heels.

"You guys don't need a fourth, right?"

"No, Morgan," Sarah shot over her shoulder.

"Kay, fine. Just askin'. Careful, guys!"

And like that they were gone, hurrying through the courtyard and clamoring into her Porsche.

Sarah sped the whole way there, trying not to lose focus whenever Chuck nervously rambled. He mostly asked questions about the mission, questioning their roles, admitting to not being entirely prepared to march into Ring headquarters. Her replies were short as she weaved through traffic and once even ran a red light because there weren't any other cars at the intersection.

They pulled into the empty Buy More parking lot and she parked in a spot near the Orange Orange. They sat for a moment, neither making a move to get out of the car. Sarah reached up and slowly pulled the key out of the ignition.

"Chuck—"

"Sarah—"

They stopped, wide-eyed, and Chuck grinned again. She smiled back and looked down at her lap. "Chuck, this mission is extremely important. I know a lot's happened tonight…between us…but I'm going to need you to keep your mind on the task at hand." She looked up at him, her face shadowed by the light beneath which she parked her Porsche. "_Please_."

He nodded immediately. "Of course, Sarah. There's a lot at stake. I get that. I get it. But…I need to know if you…if you meant what you said."

Sarah fought the urge to roll her eyes. Why would she say something like that if she didn't mean it? Didn't he know how incredibly difficult it was for her to talk about feelings? Granted, she wasn't Casey, but still, she wouldn't have struggled through that conversation if she didn't mean those words with every fibre of her being.

Instead, she just answered him with as much sincerity as she could muster. "I meant every word."

There was that grin that made her heart race again. He leaned forward and kissed her again, his fingers tenderly tracing the skin on her neck. She reached out to hold onto his elbow and moved to wrap her other arm around him when her phone buzzed. They jumped apart, faces flushed, and she picked it up, cringing as she recognized Shaw's dark gaze looking up at her from the screen.

"Shaw, we're at the Orange Orange. Be down soon."

"Hurry up," he quite nearly snapped.

She pocketed her phone again. "You ready, Chuck?"

"I was born ready—Well, not really born. Actually I'm a little terrified. I mean, this _is _the Ring…"

Sarah smirked as she got out of the Porsche as he did the same. They walked towards the door of the Orange Orange and she pulled her shop keys out.

She felt Chuck's fingers curl around hers and hold on tightly. She squeezed just as hard, her heart racing from a little bit more than just the knowledge that Chuck Bartowski was in love with her and now knew she was in love with him. They were about to walk into Castle and face Daniel Shaw, their partner, and the man she'd once had every intention of moving to DC with. Then they'd be willingly walking straight into the belly of the beast, the Ring headquarters. And without John Casey, a man she'd come to trust with her life more than any other partner she'd ever had. She knew Chuck felt the same by looking at the worry etched into his thick, furrowed eyebrows.

That thought sent a new batch of nerves through her as she let go of Chuck's hand to unlock the Orange Orange door. They walked in and she relocked it behind her, following Chuck to the security door that led down into Castle where Shaw was impatiently waiting to brief them.

"Chuck don't say anything about…" She stopped, nervously switching from one foot to the other as she leaned forward to type in her code and let the key pad do the retinal scan.

"I know, Sarah," he reassured her, taking her hand again.

When the door opened, she pulled her hand away and strode purposefully onto the landing, then down the stairs. With Chuck's warm presence behind her, she knew she could face the next few hours head on. She had much to look forward to. And besides, after this mission was over and they caught the Ring director, she and Chuck might get some time off.

Maybe they'd see the Eiffel Tower, like he'd always wanted to.

That thought made her smile, but she schooled her features immediately when Shaw spun from the monitors and shot them both an annoyed look. The past hour's events were shoved deep down and the woman in love was hidden behind Agent Sarah Walker, one of the CIA's best and brightest.

They had a terrorist organization to dismantle.

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**A/N: **Two author's notes. I know, I'm such a stinker. So listen, I'd love it so much if you guys reviewed this. There's nothing an aspiring writer likes better than praise, but I'll also take constructive criticism. ;)

Love you guys! And there's more where this came from!

Thank you!


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